We All Speak A Different Language Even If We Don't

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Oh, look. There was Nelson. I could see him through my kitchen window. Great, I thought. Let me say those things I wanted to say to him. I ran upstairs and grabbed the sticky notes stuck to the computer monitor I never use — I’m a laptop girl. I opened the front door, traipsed across my yard, and stood not far from Nelson, my lawn guy. I waved him down because he was blowing the late-autumn leaves from last year to get my lawn ready for Spring.

Nelson and his brother — and sometimes others — come every other week once the grass emerges from dormancy. These days, they poke around their clients’ neighborhoods, looking for any work that can be done pre-season. They all speak Spanish and come from South America, and my neighbors and I love them.

They’re friendly, wave and smile, work hard and well, and speak whatever smidge of English they know. Except for Nelson, who speaks nearly fluent English. He’s the one in charge.

“Nelson,” I said as he walked over to say hi. “I want to tell you something.” He nodded and waited as I took a deep breath, trying to summon from the wild yonder a Spanish accent I used to have in high school Spanish class.

“Alright, here goes. Gracias por soplar mis hojas,” I told him, smiling. He smiled back.

“Did I say it right? ‘Thank you for blowing my leaves’?”

“You did and you’re welcome.” He smiled. Nelson is kind.

“Okay, hold on. Here’s another one. Gracias por ayudarme todos estos años.”

This one got him a little emotional — just what I was going for.

“Did I say, ‘Thank you for helping me all these years’?”

“You did.”

“And, Que tengas un buen fin de semana y pórtate bien.” He smiled because I told him to have a nice weekend and to behave himself.

“I will,” he said, giving a little smirk. We laughed as we walked over to a dead tree to discuss him removing it one day.

I was happy. Mission accomplished.

All this reminded me of the time I was standing in Marshall’s store, waiting in the check-out line. Two women were chatting in line behind me in a foreign language when suddenly I realized I knew what language they were speaking. I waited for a lull in their conversation and turned to them.

“Merhaba,” I said. “Nasilsiniz?”

I said hello and asked them how they were doing in Turkish. They were stunned. Nobody speaks Turkish in the US — or hardly. Just like nobody spoke English in Turkey when I lived there. I was compelled to learn it or live in limbo while there.

“How do you know Turkish?” they asked, half surprised and half thrilled. From that one short greeting given in their native language, you could feel the human connection. I’m so fond of that memory.

I was in a writing workshop the other day when someone said the word “shtum”. He meant that he was going to stay quiet, mum. It’s Yiddish for shush. Some of us on the Zoom call took the opportunity to try our hand at pronouncing it in various ways, with a variety of accents, too. It was silly stuff — right up our alley. Then someone observed that words are always changing. If not their pronunciation, then certainly their meaning. Language is always evolving, a creature in its own right.

We pondered how a word comes to be. Why does that sound or string of sounds come to mean what it does? I recalled what I knew about a baby’s first sounds — the “m”, “b”, and short “a”. These are the easiest sounds their unskilled lips can make. Thus, “ma” and “ba” came to represent the baby’s words for their caregivers holding and feeding them. In most languages, the words for mother and father involve these sounds or something similar.

While I know little about this subject, language derivation is well documented. Still, I like to read about communication when it crosses my view. One interesting tidbit is that our brains learn how to cope and become more socially adept via story. Jonathan Gottschall goes into this in his book, The Storytelling Animal — an interesting read. We learn from each other via our accounts of our journeys through life.

You can imagine how language barriers throw this all to the wind. How can we learn from each other when we can’t communicate? Trust is dependent on this. Think back on any instances you’ve had with others with whom you couldn’t connect verbally. I imagine you did what I do — it’s so obvious a solution: you start acting out what you want to say.

Acting is a form of communication, just as artful renditions are. When we want to get across the notion, “I come in peace,” we automatically smile and nod as if we’re trying to say, “I can’t convey kindness and trust through words right now, but hopefully my humble facial and bodily expressions will do.”

Words matter. And if there are no available words, then expression matters.

When training to become a coach, one of the tools emphasized for the budding coach was leveraging the client’s words. Words can carry such nuance for the speaker that “invest” or “bracket” or “tree” or “cloud” can mean something deep or specific for the client that I’ll never fully understand. However, I can learn to hear when a word sounds special, useful, or particular to someone. Even if I don’t hear this, I can try to engage in the conversation using the words the client uses for certain things. I can stick with “tree” when they use it metaphorically instead of adjusting to “greenery” or “woods”.

This not only conveys that I understand their personal language, but that I accept it as the language with which we’ll conduct our conversation. This is trust, and where there’s trust, there can be story, and subsequently, connection.

Who knows how much my little sticky-note Spanish statements to Nelson meant to him, but before he left with his crew, he thanked me with a hug and a look of gratitude in his eyes. We both knew that I looked silly standing there mangling the proper Latino accent of my sentences, but we both knew that I meant what I said.

I wanted him to know I appreciated all he’d done for me. This is part of my story, and I wanted him to hear it. I’m pretty sure he did.

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Be well, friends. I'm saying hello in a language of gratitude for you.